Benjamin Steiner

„Eine Ansicht, welche das wahre Wesen der Historie vernichtet?“ Criticizing the enlightenment’s view of man and history

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Workshop on the Sciences of Man circa 1800 Rauischholzhausen, 13.-16. October 2013

„Eine Ansicht, welche das wahre Wesen der Historie vernichtet?“ Criticizing the enlightenment’s view of man and history

Benjamin Steiner Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

„An opinion that devastates the true essence of history“ – the deep conviction of telling

history how it actually took place, was common among historians long before Leopold

von Ranke coined his famous and still often quoted phrase: „wie es eigentlich gewesen“.1

In fact, it wasn’t the towering historian of the Germanic and Romanic peoples, but a

lowly school teacher from Augsburg who pleaded for a truthful history already in the

beginning of the 19th century. Georg Heinrich Kayser is long forgotten and not much is

known about his career and life. His only publication remains the Geschichts-Tafeln zum

Gebrauche der Gymnasial-Anstalten from 1812, a short collection of historical tables for

use in school classes, mostly for the lower grades.2

I chose the Geschichts-Tafeln by Kayser among many examples of the genre of Historical

Tabular Works, which appeared all over the early modern period in great number – I

counted well over 200 distinct titles which can be attributed to tabular historiography.3

                                                                                                               1 Leopold von Ranke: Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514.

Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtschreiber, Leipzig / Berlin 1824, VI.

2 [Georg Heinrich] Kayser: Geschichts-Tafeln zum Gebrauche der Gymnasial-Anstalten von

Kayser, Professor am Gymnasio zu Augsburg, Zweyte veränderte und verbesserte Auflage, 1.

Heft, München / Burghausen: Ernst August Fleischmann, 1812; a second volume appeared only

in 1814. Kayser’s Geschichts-Tafeln does not seem to have received large attention, only very few

exemplars can be found in libraries today.

3 Cf. the online-database for early modern historical tabular works: Historische Tabellenwerke,

http://www.sfb-frueheneuzeit.uni-

muenchen.de/projekte/zusatz/HistorischeTabellenwerke/Index.html, 17.1.14; for extensive

discussion cf. Benjamin Steiner: Die Ordnung der Geschichte. Historische Tabellenwerke in der

Frühen Neuzeit, Köln / Wien / Weimar 2008; for a more general account on historical tables see

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Kayser’s œuvre signifies the end of a period in which the writing history achieved a high

degree of differentiation and sophistication. The classic work of tabular historiography is

the Chronicon by Eusebius of Caesarea written around the year 311.4 This patristic

account compared Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and Hebrew historical

timelines in order to determine the greater anciennité of the biblical history against

pagan claims to chronologies that reached beyond the crucial year of 4000 BC – the year

of the creation of the world. Eusebius has been translated from Greek to Latin by

Hieronymus in the 6th century and served to be the standard textbook for history during

the Middle Ages well until the 16th century.5

After the invention of print, tabular historiography remained popular, in fact, came

about to see its golden age. The 16th century has been for scholars, as Anthony Grafton

pointed out, a century of chronological science. Not only Martin Luther devised his own

tabular scheme to calculate the present point in time and in relation to the expected

arrival of Judgement Day – supposedly 6000 years after the creation of the world.6

Others, especially the late 16th century scholar from Leiden, Johann Justus Scaliger,

devoted his whole erudition and scholarly life to the study of chronology, which included

a modern edition of the Eusebius-Chronicon that marked one of the greatest philological

accomplishments of his time.7 Tabular historiography became somewhat less

                                                                                                               

Anthony Grafton / Daniel Rosenberg: Cartographies of time. A History of the timeline, New York

2010.

4 Cf. the modern edition of Eusebius von Caesarea: Die Chronik des Hieronymus, hg. und in

zweiter Auflage bearbeitet im Auftrage der Kommission für spätantike Religionsgeschichte der

deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin von Rudolf Helm (Eusebius Werke, Bd. 7),

Berlin 1956.

5 Cf. for detailed analysis of the editorial history of this book A. Alden Mosshammer: The

Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition, Lewisburg 1979.

6 Martin Luther: Supputatio Annorum Mundi D. M. Lutheri, Wittenberg: Georgium Rhau, 1541.

7 Cf. Anthony Grafton: Joseph Scaliger. A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 Bde.,

Oxford 1983/93; esp. II, Part 4 on the Thesaurus temporum (1606).

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sophisticated in regards to the erudition involved in its making during the 17th and 18th

century. It can be seen, however, as an indication of how methodologically history was

treated, especially in school class rooms.8 Mnemonically, in a classical sense,

pedagogically, in a rather baroque sense, tables served as widely diffused means to

convey historical facts, timelines, and a basis for narrative accounts.9

Also, historical tables contributed to the process of scientification – my translation of

Verwissenschaftlichung – of historiography in the 18th century. Martin Gierl elaborated

on this development in this volume, as can be studied in detail in his admirable book

Geschichte als präzisierte Wissenschaft. Johann Christoph Gatterer und die

Historiographie des 18. Jahrhunderts im ganzen Umfang (2012).10

Following, I want to extend on a point which seems to express not only a specific problem

of the history of historiography, but also of the general view of historians on the nature

of human being as historical agents. First, I will turn to Kayser’s Geschichts-Tafeln and

to his short introductory text, which gives an insight into a historiographical-

philosophical debate that arose in Germany around 1800. Kayser’s account is not one

that equals other contribution discourse on history as philosophy by the intellectual

                                                                                                               8 Cf. one of the major historical tabular works in the 17th century: Christoph Helwig: Theatrum

historicum Sive chronologiae systema novum: aequalibus Centuriarum & Decadum intervallis;

cum assignatione Imperiorum, Regnorum, Dynastiarum, Regum, Aliorumque Virorum Celebrium,

Prohetarum, Theologorum, Iureconsultorum, Medicorum, Philosophorum, Historicorum,

Poetarum, Haereticorum, Rabbimorum, Conciliorum, Synodorum, Academiarum, &c. itemque

istatarum Epocharum, ita digestum, ut Universa Temporum & Historiarum series à Mundi

originie ad hunc praesentem annum 1609. animo facilime comprehendi & perpetuo circumferri

possit, Gießen: Nicolaus Hampelius, 1609.

9 Cf. for the use of tables in history class rooms Benjamin Steiner: Orte der Instruktion. Diffusion

historischen Wissens im Geschichtsunterricht der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Geschichte schreiben. Ein

Quellen- und Studienhandbuch zur Historiografie (ca. 1350-1750), hg. v. Susanne Rau / Birgit

Studt [u. a.]. Berlin 2010, 97-110.

10 Cf. Martin Gierl: Geschichte als präzisierte Wissenschaft. Johann Christoph Gatterer und die

Historiographie des 18. Jahrhunderts im ganzen Umfang, Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt 2012.

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movement known as German Idealism. But it represents a simple but widely distributed

belief that history in its essence should be more than a realization of a philosophical

idea. Having said this, I will show that Kayser argues not only against so called

speculative historiography, but also against an understanding of history that treats the

past by enumerating mere facts without grasping them as parts of a continuous whole –

thereby becoming somewhat speculative, too, but more in a Rankean than a Hegelian

sense. Finally, I will conclude in relating Kayser’s critique to the German enlightenment

historiography, concentrating not so much on Gatterer, but on his Göttingen

contemporary August Ludwig Schlözer and his view on the historical agency in a history

as science. This will show that Kayser, taken as a representative of a commonly held

view, not primarily criticizes a specific historiographical methodology, but rather a

certain conception of man as a scientific object.

1.

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Kayser’s Geschichts-Tafeln, of which I show here the first leaflet, appeared in their

second edition in 1812 – a second leaflet was obviously published a few months later, but

no exemplar is conserved as well as there is not a first edition to be found. The presented

digitalized example above is from the University Library in Munich. The first table

shows the beginning of history. Kayser dates it on the year 2000 BC – clearly framed in

opposition to the formerly commonly expected eschatological origin. Kayser’s Geschichts-

Tafeln represent a secularized version of the categories according to Scripture and other

ancient texts. Typically, the nations that remain here are Egypt, Assyria, Syria, Juda

(the secularized Hebrew tradition), Phoenicia, Greece, and Italy; only Asia Minor –

Vorder-Asien – is a modern denomination (interestingly subdivided in Troy, Lydia,

Phrygia and Greek coastal cities).

Kayser does not mention sources, which is typical for authors of such historical tabular

accounts. What is, however, untypical for the early modern tradition is the rather

extensive and elaborate narrative on the different entries. Especially the first

chronological entries are revealing for the lacking brevity which was seen essential for

the facticity of the historical information in tables. For Egypt he notes for the year 2000:

„The social order established early. Influence of religion on the former. Priest caste, as a

tribe of the originally priviledged educated. Distinction of nouns. Hieroglyphs or

allegorical pictorial script. Thebes.“ For Italy he states: „Uncertainty about the

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indigenous population“, as he continues enumerating Umbrians, Etruscans, and

Ligurians etc.

Turning away from sweeping over the tableau, Kayser gives – as it is also common with

accounts of this genre – detailed instructions on how to use the tables properly. Also, he

justifies the tabular historiography as a means that he elaborates in a rather broad

manner and full of socio-philosophical programmtic ideas. History, in his opinion, has

suffered from recent mistreatment and has to be reestablished as an instrument for

reflecting on the inner depth of the human being („die innersten Tiefen seiner selbst“). It

is history that connects the individual to the deceased ancient societies. Thus, the

present time becomes clear to the individual as a result of all previous human

endeavours. And all the individuals that have once existed become alive again and while

being presented to the historian, Kayser writes in a rather Hegelian tone, he learns to

reflects on himself by looking at the deed of others. Therefore, history serves as the

earthly tribunal of the Last Judgement – das Weltgericht; and as such it is a principal

means of education to humanity.

2.

History, in Kaysers understanding, educates students in schools towards humanity. Is

this, then, the well known story of the German ideal of Bildung? This has been aptly

exspressd by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1821: Historiography and history, Humboldt

writes in Ueber die Aufgabe des Geschichtsschreibers, is nothing else than an act of a

subjective sensual construction.11 Individuality, as Georg Iggers writes about Humboldt,

„is only the concrete-historical expression of a metaphysical reality, of ethical ideas“.12

                                                                                                               11 Cf. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Über die Aufgabe des Geschichtsschreibers (1821), in: Gesammelte

Schriften, hg. v. Albert Leitzmann, Berlin 1905 ND 1968, IV, 35-56,

12 Georg G. Iggers, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft. Eine Kritik der traditionellen

Geschichtsauffassung von Herder bis zur Gegenwart, Wien / Köln / Weimar 1997, 80

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Kayser strongly objects to this belief of the coninciding of subjective understanding and

the objective narrative. Instead, he attacks the central premice of German Idealism and

rather proposes a fact-based approach.13

Since Schelling, Kayser writes, the before mentioned „opinion that devastates the true

essence of history“ has arisen to a worrying degree in the collective consciousness.14 He

rejects the conception of the human being that constitutes history a priori. The Idealist

treatment of history did not produce historical accounts as such, but rather a

performance of „uninteresting subjectivity“. To avoid arbitrary judgement on historical

matters one has no choice than to retreat on the material of history, the sources. As

luminary example serves Thucydides who not only treated things, „how they are“, and

expects tacit understanding for possible underlying ideas. He also gives individuals like

the Athenian politician Alcibiades a particular role as historical agent who does more

than constituting a higher principle than himself in history.

The down-to-earth criticism, that is put foreword by Kayser, is not without parallel. The

insistance on human agency, the scepticism towards overlying structures of history, be it

reason (as Hegel wanted it) or ethical ideas (as Humboldt saw it), and the general

distance towards a Zeitgeist of subjectivity have also led authors like Friedrich von

Schiller to a very distinct understanding of history in its most practical sense.15 Both,

Kayser and Schiller, saw it as their job to convey history, in the class room and on stage.

                                                                                                               13 Cf. also Thomas Prüfer, Wilhelm von Humboldts „rhetorische Hermeneutik“. Historische

Sinnbildung im Spannungsfeld von Empirie, Philosophie und Poesie, in: ders. and Daniel Fulda

(ed.), Faktenglaube und fiktionales Wissen. Zum Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Kunst in der

Moderne, Frankfurt am Main 1996, 127-166, and Hans-Michael Baumgartner, Die subjektiven

Voraussetzungen der Historie und der Sinn von Parteilichkeit, in: Reinhart Koselleck (ed.),

Objektivität und Parteilichkeit in der Geschichtswissenschaft, München 1977, 425-440.

14 Kayser 1812, Preface.

15 Cf. Friedrich von Schiller: Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?

Eine akademische Antrittsrede, in: Der teutsche Merkur, 4 (1789), 105-135.

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History, therefore, had to stand aside philosophical conceptions and ideal constructions.

While Schiller divised narrative strategies to overcome this philosophical bias, Kayser

turned to the sources (Quellen) and to facts (Thatsachen) – the material for his historical

tables.

3.

There recurs the old 18th century struggle between the Göttingen historians Johann

Christoph Gatterer and August Ludwig Schlözer of how to write universal history.16

Gatterer claims to study historical facts in detail, with all „precision“ that can be

attained by using all the auxiliary sciences like chronology, heraldy or meterology.17

Schlözer, by contrast, prefers to see history „as a whole“; no racial and cultural

distinction, like the enlightenment historians of France and Scotland would have it, but

a history of man, where everyone is equal „Negros, Japanese, Europeans“.18 Kayser’s

Geschichts-Tafeln and his insistance on sources and facts have to be situated in this

debate, can be interpreted, as I would claim, as an attempt to solve the disagreement

between Schlözer and Gatterer.

Every study, writes Kayser, that leads to a thorough knowledge of history, has to start

with the sober collection of facts. This can only be achieved by looking directly at the

historical sources. Through second-hand knowledge one only enters the realm of

speculation. Facts and source material, however, should facilitate the free discourse of

                                                                                                               16 Cf. Gierl 2012, bes. 366 ff.

17 Johann Christoph Gatterer, Vom historischen Plan, und der darauf sich gründenden

Zusammenfügung der Erzählungen, edited by H. Blanke / D. Fleischer, Frommann-Holzboog ed,

Theoretiker der deutschen Aufklärungshistorie. Band 2: Elemente der Aufklärungshistorik

(=Fundamenta Historica 1.2), Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt 1990, 621-662; Johann Christoph Gatterer:

Einleitung in die synchronistische Universalhistorie zur Erläuterung seiner synchronistischen

Tabellen, 1. Aufl., Göttingen: Vandenhoek, 1771.

18 August Ludwig Schlözer: Vorstellung seiner Universal-Historie, Göttingen, Gotha: Johann

Christian Dieterich, 1772, 5 f.

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history in the class room: „Der frey gehaltvolle Vortrag“ – the freely held, wholesome

lecture, captivates the youthful mind. To speak freely, without constraints, Kayser

continues, cannot be learned, that quality can only be acquired by birth, through God.19

No matter how one sees it, history has to be understood by its framework, its Gerüst,

that includes dates, names of places and persons. Kayser is aware of the usual criticism

and ridcule that has been uttered by his contemporaries about this „earlier“ form of

historical education. The mnemonic technics like historical tables were seen as tiresome,

boring and even falsifying a correct understanding of history. Schlözer called it memory

torture („Folter des Gedächtnisses“). Nonetheless, Kayser continues to insist on the

necessity of tables, and gives three reasons: 1) Tables denote what everybody has to

know by heart; 2) they serve for preparation, in the sense that they elude to numbers,

names and places in fashion that they seem to be familiar during the lecture; 3) they

provide a synchronistical-ethnographical synopsis of events. The main use, however,

consists that the table compels the viewer to become active and attentive in forming the

raw material to organic life and to history with a „soul“. Tables, therefore, facilitate the

task to grasp history from its factual material state as a whole, as it has been wished by

Schlözer.

Tabular historiography elevate facts to a reconstruction of the inner cohesion („innerer

Zusammenhang“), the causalities of events, in short: history as it has actually took place.

Surprisingly, the tables in Kayser’s view do not serve precise historiography. On the

contrary, they are means to derive the essence of history from a mere collection of facts.

Usage of synoptic overviews, sweeping over the synchronic and diachronic relations,

immersing in the study of details constitutes the necessary activity of the student to

understand history as a form of communicating with the past. Kayser’s position is not

very far from the one of the speculative historians he criticizes in the beginning of his

                                                                                                               19 Cf. Kayser 1812, Vorwort

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preface. Only, he sees no disadvantage in studying the facts and sources beforehand very

closely, before he introduces via free discourse the element of life to the tabular

framework.

4.

To conclude I would like to compare Kayser’s treatment of history to that of August

Ludwig Schlözer. Schlözer believed in human agency in history. He did not see men as

mere willing executioners of a general course of history. His position, I would say, could

be described as being in the middle of the positivist approach of the historians connected

to the French and Scottish enlightenment (as well as his rival Gatterer) and the

speculative approach by Idealist philosopher-historians like Humboldt, Hegel or Herder.

Like Kayser, Schlözer seems to have been a teacher, a popular one, if one compares him

to his Göttingen colleague Gatterer, who had not as many listeners in his lecture on

universal history. This was no coincidence: Historians of this sort, emphasized history as

a story that everybody should understand – they saw the universality of universal

history not so much in its quantity and precision of encyclopedic knowledge, but more in

the general sentiment that history could convey concerning the general human

condition.

Schlözer’s premise was the universality of humanity in all cultures. One of his more

famous phrases was: „Man is nothing by nature, he can become everything by

conjunctures: the second part of his being is indetermination.“20 In his Vorstellung seiner

Universal-Historie from 1772 Schlözer elaborated (as Gierl has shown, in opposition to

Gatterer’s precise history) also on the necessity of collecting the material from

specialized histories. It forms in its entirety the „aggregate“ of all histories, which

                                                                                                               20 Schlözer 1772, 6: „Der Mensch ist von Natur nichts, und kann durch Conjuncturen alles

werden: die Unbestimmtheit macht den zweiten Theil seines Wesens aus.“

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constitutes in a way whole.21 But the universal historian has to achieve a „system“, in

which world and mankind are united, and are selected, ordered and formed from all

parts of the aggregate in relation to each other. Only a general oversight that comprises

the whole can form the aggregate to become a system. All states of the earth have to be

united to the one human race.22

How to achieve this universal unification? Schlözer proposes, very similar to Kayser, a

new form of historical tabular synopsis. These tables have to combine synchronistic

history and diachronic process. Furthermore, a synchronistic Realzusammenhang has to

be shown in the tabular order contrary to a mere Zeitzusammenhang that does not relate

events in a causal manner to each other. This cannot be attained by a collector of

historical facts. But it cannot be achieved by mere artistry either, as would later be

proposed by Schelling envisioning an aesthetic historiography.

In a later work, Über die Geschichtsauffassung from 1784, Schlözer ridicules both

choices as impractical. A historial painter (Geschichts-Maler) has to master three skills:

He has to have all pure facta always standing by for his use; he must know „all“ facta

that lie in his subject; and he has to have all facta in a light order and comfortable

register in front of himself, since all the facts have to be right available during a possible

genial moment. This, Schlözer believes, is impossible. No painter can mix his colours all

by himself.23

The other alternative would be a collector of histories (GeschichtSammler). He has to

fulfill five duties: He needs to know all facta without one exception, e.g. Charlemagne, in

the whole historical world-archive, in all chronicles, documents, inscriptions, legends,                                                                                                                21 Cf. ibid., 14.

22 Cf., ibid., 18 f.

23 Cf. August Ludwig Schlözer, Über die Geschichtsverfassung (1784), edited by H. Blanke / D.

Fleischer, Theoretiker der deutschen Aufklärungshistorie. Band 2: Elemente der

Aufklärungshistorik (=Fundamenta Historica 1.2), Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt 1990, here 593.

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homilis etc.; he needs to know all these facta in context – with diplomatic assidiousness –

but also, Schlözer adds, with the mentioning of all sources and evidence, that support

the factum or do not support it; he has to order the chaos of information chronologically,

has to pile up everything that happened, for example, in the year 800, divide it up, add

little numbers into the margins, apposite column titles, different colour codes etc.;

finally, he has to promise that there is no knowledge on Charlemagne in any book,

edition, not even a word about him, that cannot be found also at the proper place in his

excerpts. Such a book, Schlözer closes sardonically, he would title „Materia historiae

Caroli M.[agni]“.24

The latter type of historian, whom Nietzsche would have called an archivalist historian,

parodizes the empiricist and positivist historian that usually was associated with the

statistical treatment of history and man by enlightened philosophers. This polemic also

was directed against a certain scientific treatment of man, as it was proposed by the

Scottish Enlightenment.25 Kayser and Schlözer tried to find a middle way, basically with

a minimum of theoretical reflection and speculation, but also with a minimum of

empirical information. Their view of universal history was rather directed to a

performative aspect of making history come to life again. They called for active

participation of a reader of tables, for example, or pointed out the necessity of oral

persuasion during a lecture in the class room. History, therefore, could only be

reenacted, like in a Schillerian play or a Rankean narrative.

The success of this approach to history became evident in the 19th century. Not so much

because historical knowledge became more precise, better documented or less religiously

biased, but because history meant something to people. History could serve as a human

                                                                                                               24 Ibid., 595 f.

25 Cf. Annette Meyer: Von der Wahrheit zur Wahrscheinlichkeit: Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen

in der schottischen und deutschen Aufklärung (Hallesche Beiträge zur europaischen Aufklärung),

Tübingen 2008.

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science in a sense that it did not need complex prerequisites to be properly understood.

History was about human beings. It was written by them, written about them, and

written for them. The purpose of history and historiography, that is how I understand

the sentiment of the Zeitgeist that is expressed in works by Kayser or Schlözer, was to

contribute to a certain understanding of humanity, not as it was seen by science, but

rather tautologically: as human beings saw themselves in the past through history.